Month: April 2010

As the ash cloud hovers ominously over Europe, so does the discussion and debate about reimbursements, damages and loans.

I flew to Bangkok, and was stranded there, with SAS. I cannot praise them highly enough. We passengers were provided with bus transportation, with hotel accommodation, with breakfast, with lunch, with dinner. We were given a voucher to cover email time and 3 minutes of international phone calls.

Other airlines made their passengers sleep at the airport, or pay for their own hotel and food. FinnAir flew people to Helsinki but, prior to boarding, made them sign a waiver to say they did not demand FinnAir should take them onwards to their final destination. So, once landed in Helsinki, passengers had to organise their own transportation to Copenhagen, Paris or wherever they were headed.

SAS got us home. Every one of us. At no extra cost to us.

For me, in the future, there is no competition. I will choose SAS every time I fly. I recommend everyone else does the same.

If we finally understand what a good airline SAS is, maybe we can save it from the bankruptcy that all experts are currently warning about. Sure, SAS might be more expensive than other airlines, but they have a humane approach to their customers.

The rain trickles down from the sky. Although it’s nearly May, the rain is a little icy. It stings a bit when it hits your skin. My coat is unbuttoned, so I pull it more closely around me. The wind cuts through me like a knife. I curse the fact that I only have a shirt on underneath and not a jumper too.

I walk along the road and notice that the cafés have opened their outdoor terraces. People huddle outside and drink a beer, or eat pizza. Some of them are lucky enough to have an infraheater above their heads casting a grateful heat onto them. Others may be shrouded in woolly blankets to protect them from the chill.

It really is far too cold to sit outside. But, this is Sweden, and it is the spring and as soon as the outdoor terraces are open, you sit there.

You might not know this but I am an aristocrat. Yes, it’s true, I am titled. I am a Count. My official title is Balloon Count of Barkaby. I was given this title in a champagne ceremony a few years ago.

The title of Count or Countess is something that everybody is given after they carry out a journey in a hot air balloon over Stockholm. Where you land dictates where you become a Count or Countess of. I landed on a not-so-glamorous air strip in Barkaby, a not-so-attractive suburb outside the city.

Hot air ballooning is synonymous with the summer skyline of Stockholm. Every evening, weather permitting, the sky fills with a mass of brightly coloured balloons with baskets of gleeful passengers hanging beneath them. The growl of the flame can be heard on street level as the balloons sail gently across the evening sky.

From up there, you get a fantastic view of the city. You see clearly how Stockholm is built on islands and how bridges form a network of communication. You see the houses shining in shades of ochra, amber and gold. You see people busy in parks, on the water and in the squares.

In these days where the sky is filled with ash clouds and planes can’t take us where we want to be, perhaps it will become the era of the hot air balloon.

In London and many other cities, the cityscape is dominated by high walls, fences, gates, and locked doors. Signs saying ‘No entry’,’Tresspassers will be Prosecuted’ and ‘Private Property’ abound.

Not in Stockholm. One of things that strikes a tourist or a foreigner when they come to Stockholm is the openness and accessibility of the city. In Stockholm, you are mostly free to amble down canal paths and along the lakesides. No private owner has claimed it as their own. At bus stops, buses sink to street level to allow disabled people access to public transport. The city’s parks are not fenced in, or shut after 11pm, but spill out onto the streets that surround them.

But the thing that reflects Stockholm’s accessibility the most is the way the city presents its public buildings. The Royal Palace in the centre of the city is not fenced off like London’s Buckingham Palace to keep the hoards at bay. If you want, you can walk right up to the palace and touch it. The Houses of Parliament have a pedestrianised walkway running right through the middle of them connecting Stockholm’s Old Town to the commercial centre. Not a policeman in sight.

Stockholm’s politicians and royals are often seen on the streets or at public events mixing with the hoi pal loi. Granted, they have body guards, but they are very discreet.

Unfortunately, this accessibility has resulted in murder. Prime Minister Olof Palme and the Foreign Minister Anna Lindh were both struck down, one on the street, the other in a department store. These tragedies however have not removed the Swedish need for accessibility and openness.

Accessibility is one way in which the Swedes display their fierce belief in democracy.

And if you take that away, what then is left of a progressive modern society?

ArchipelagoOne of the Stockholmers favourite summer retreats is the archipelago outside of the city. The archipelago consists of over 20 000 islands. The islands are mostly flat and usually covered in greenery. They are various sizes ranging from the smallest of cobs and skerries to large islands with roads and villages. From the air it looks like God has broken digestive biscuits into different sized pieces and scattered them into the Baltic Sea.

Many of the islands are inhabited by permanent residents and a boat service carries residents to and from Stockholm in anything from one to six hours. Most islands, however, are not permanently inhabited, some having space only for a few wooden holiday cottages dotted about.

Many Stockholmers boat out to the archipelago in the summer months. They take picnics with them and munch on sour dough bread, quinoa salad and sip rosé wine. They sunbathe and swim from the rocks, often exotically naked. If the water temperature is over 17 degrees celsius they are happy. They glide in kayaks through calm, glistening water. They convene with nature.

I remember the first time I went out to the archipelago as a hardened Londoner. When we arrived at our island destination, all I could see was rocks and trees. I remember wondering where the pub was and how the hell anyone could spend a whole day sitting on a rock. But Stockholmers do just that.

For Swedes, the natural environment is very important whether it’s the archipelago, the woods or the mountains. It is as if many Swedes long to get away from their cosmopolitan lifestyles and retreat to their little red cottages deep in the woods. Or go fishing in fresh-water lakes. Or spend weekends picking wild berries. And mushrooms.

As little as a century ago, Sweden was an agrarian country with many of the people living under impoverished conditions. This heritage is still apparent in the Swedish mentality and could be one explanation for the sentimental relationship to nature.

Nature is an integral part of the Swedish lifestyle and Stockholm’s archipelago is the ultimate manifestation of this.

If you’d like to know more about Swedish culture, I strongly recommend this book – Fishing in Utopia by Andrew Brown. Written in 2008, it is about an Englishman’s experience of living in Sweden. In the 70’s he moved to Sweden to be with his Swedish girlfriend, then wife. Sweden was a Utopia for him – a welfare state that looked after its citizens. Unfortunately, his marriage didn’t work out and he moved back to England, where he became a successful journalist on The Independant.

Decades later, he decided to visit Sweden again to see if the Utopian future became true. Did the future everyone believed in then,actually come true? Or did the future disappear?

A great read. A fantastic way of describing a Sweden that was, and the Sweden of today. He tackles the small issues such as fishing in fresh-water lakes and the big issues such as what does it mean to be Swedish in the 21st century.

And so, miraculously, I am back in Sweden! We managed to secure seats on the only plane out of Bangkok that was flying to Scandinavia. Since the air space over Stockholm closes again at 20.00 tonight, we were really lucky! I now understand what a window of opportunity means.

I have to admit that it was rather scary knowing that we were flying over (through? around?) the ash cloud, but everything went well. When we landed, the relief that ran through the cabin was noticeable.

And one other thing was telling. The purser’s anouncement when we had landed on the runway went like this:

‘Thank for for choosing to fly SAS and Star Alliance. We hope you have enjoyed the journey and that you choose us again for your next flight – if we have survived ths….’